


Things Not To Lose

by Hokuto



Category: Bleach
Genre: Character Study, Character of Color, Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 17:08:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/pseuds/Hokuto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hanatarou finding a kind of bravery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things Not To Lose

**Author's Note:**

> This was probably the first actual fanfic I had written in quite awhile - at least, since I'd started college. It is a little schmoopy, but then, so is Hanatarou...

He had always been a good shinigami.

Well - he had always tried, at least. He wasn't sure how how it worked for other shinigami, but for him, the world had reserved an endless string of bumpy floors, spilled tea, and - almost always - members of the eleventh division in close proximity to both of the above. He lost things, or forgot to do them; on not just one but several memorable occasions, he had gotten lost himself and rescued only by others from the fourth division, who would never let him live it down even though it had been _years_ since he'd been really lost, that time his senpai had directed him into the ladies' showers by "accident" didn't _count_...

But he was a good healer, and he had no real trouble following the rules, and that was all you really needed to get by in the fourth division; as for the rest, Hanatarou kept his head down and did his best, ever hopeful and steadfast in the belief that if he just kept working and trying his hardest, one day the world would notice, and stop waking him up at three in the morning with prank alarms.

Then Kuchiki Rukia had smiled. And she hadn't even been smiling at him, she had been smiling for someone else, someone far away; part of the beauty of Rukia's smile was that it didn't have to be directed at you, it only had to be. You knew the world was going right if somewhere in it, Kuchiki Rukia could smile.

It was the kind of smile that you couldn't replace, if you lost it.

Things had gotten sort of - complicated, after that. It was hard to believe that someone as simple and direct as Kurosaki Ichigo could make matters complicated, but the fire-headed shinigami seemed to have a knack for it, and the exact type of weird charisma that could drag an otherwise innocent, law-abiding member of the fourth division right into the worst of the trouble.

But Ichigo wasn't here now, and everything had gotten simple again, very suddenly.

Ichigo wasn't here, and none of his friends were here, and Ganju wouldn't fight, and that had made everything very simple indeed.

He wished he could stop shivering. He couldn't help it; you didn't have to be particularly sensitive to feel Captain Kuchiki's spiritual power, like an extra element in the air that had seized all the other elements and brought them down in chains so you couldn't breathe and you could barely stand under the weight of it. Kuchiki Byakuya was more than a captain; he was a legend. He was a noble. He was a genius. He could eat Menos Grandes for breakfast and vice-captains for dessert and a little fourth division shinigami wouldn't even be a bug in his eyes...

Hanatarou had lost a lot of things over the years; healer's kits, sandals, favorite books, beloved stuffed animals, treasured pictures... He didn't even have his soul cutter now; it was probably lying in his room, quiet and forgotten and useless.

But there was one thing he _wasn't_ going to lose.

He stood on the bridge to the Tower, unarmed and shaking and waiting for the most terrifying captain of the Thirteen Divisions, and thought:

_If I can be brave enough... if I do my best..._

_... maybe Lady Rukia will smile when she thinks of me, too..._


End file.
